1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the aspect of enabling the interfacing of an intermittent motion or indexing machine which includes an indexing conveyor discharging intermittently or batchwise advanced discrete articles of manufacture with a continuous motion machine including a continually advancing receiving conveyor which is adapted to convey the articles of manufacture in a continuous motion towards subsequent workstations for further processing and/or packaging of the articles.
More particularly, the invention is directed to an apparatus facilitating the interfacing between the indexing motion and continuous motion machines wherein interfacing structure is provided by a continuous motion interfacing loop conveyor which is operatively interposed between the discharge end of the indexing conveyor of the indexing motion machine and an article-receiving end of the continually advancing receiving conveyor of the continuous motion machine, and wherein the interfacing loop conveyor has a reciprocatory or oscillating motion component superimposed on the continuous advance thereof proximate the article-discharging end of the indexing conveyor so as to correlate the relative speeds between the advance of the interfacing conveyor and that of the indexing conveyor end from which the articles of manufacture are received by the interfacing conveyor to thereby produce a uniform transfer of the articles to the interfacing conveyor, and a continuous advance of the articles to the receiving conveyor of the continuous motion machine.
Moreover, the invention is also directed to the provision of a method of interfacing an indexing motion machine with a continuous motion machine utilizing the inventive interfacing apparatus.
In essence, the invention is directed to facilitating an interfacing function between an indexing motion machine and a continuous motion machine, whereby a series of articles of manufacture; which by way of example only, may be incontinent pads which are basically shallow-constructed flexible foamed sheet material items, are advanced intermittently or in indexed batches by an indexing conveyor from an indexing motion manufacturing machine, but which are to be conveyed in a continuous manner and in uniformly spaced succession towards further workstations which may optionally entail the use of some or all of tape application units, folding structures and/or packaging devices for finishing and packaging for shipment of the packaged product. Hereby, ordinarily such final article processing and/or packaging procedures are implemented while the articles are conveyed to the workstations in a continuously advancing motion; in effect, through the intermediary of a continuous motion conveyor arrangement. Consequently, in order to ensure a continuous flow of uniformly spaced articles to such final processing workstations, it becomes necessary to be able to interface the intermittently advancing or indexing conveyor with the continuous motion conveyor which conducts the articles towards the workstations, through the interposition of interfacing structure between the respective conveyors so as to automatically convert the intermittent or batchwise flow of articles discharged from the conveyor of the indexing motion machine into a continuous flow of uniformly spaced articles.